Intermediaries in Innovation Systems: Match or Mismatch?

Collaboration among different stakeholders is acknowledged as a driver of innovation. This is especially true in the context of regional and national innovation systems. However, ensuring an effective collaboration might be challenging due to different objectives and interests of the stakeholders involved. Innovation intermediaries acting as connectors among different stakeholders could overcome existing constraints unlocking the potential of collaborative innovation. In this context, this paper proposes a review of intermediaries and innovation systems at the regional and national levels. It provides a mapping of who are the main intermediaries, what are their roles and how they interact between the two geographical levels. The review enables to group intermediaries’ functions into three main roles, namely knowledge broker, market-oriented broker and capability builder, recognizing an adjuster role as transversal. Based on this mapping, a strong focus is identified in intermediaries supporting small and medium-sized firms while interactions between the two geographical levels are still lacking. The results are then discussed with respect to digital innovation hubs which are selected as exemplary innovation intermediaries whose mission is to support the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises. Future research and policies should intensify their efforts on strengthening the interrelation between intermediaries and innovation systems within the two geographical levels, measuring and validating results in multiple contexts.